Author's Note: For Swing Girl at Heart, for making it through an entire seventeen years and living to tell the tale.

She loves me

she loves me not

Because I am just a man with a smile, a coat without a brand and a flower like poison. Poison because it is poison. But no matter.

Today is the day, my pet.

The day.

She loves me.

And the knife, so thin and graceful and jagged, is sharper then it's ever been.

Because she...

you know.

She.

And today, as the calender blatantly scolds, is her birthday. The day she graced these fools with her lovely, beautiful face. All it's missing, the one thing it is missing

is a smile

just a

smile.

There is a poster plastered to a brick wall as I pass it. I take the time, the orderly man that I am, to give it a once-- twice--- thrice--- over. Our nation's president looks up wondrously at an invisible skyline, his face both red and blue and shaded like a portrait made all in old technicolor. Someone has sprayed on it, over his face and around the edges of

the paper: HAPPY BIRTHD

AY OBAMA

AUGUST 4TH

'09

and I am angry.

How dare this man--this man--take the leverage from my dear, dear Margaret.

It is her day, see?

Hers and only hers.

And the knife reminds me as I slash the poster the poster the poster falls in bits and shreds to my feet and in the puddle where

it

belongs

After it is properly disposed of, I continue onward to the home of my dear, dear gal.

But, wait! there she is. Standing there like only a women in love could.

More beautiful then the Batty Bat and his forlorn love

More beautiful then love itself.

She is just...so...

"Hello," I say, "dear."

She is weaving, her long long long fingers stroking the threads like feathers. At the sound of my voice, she jumps.

Her lovely eyes fall on me---dull, unimpressed---and she barely twitches.

She says, "Hello."

I say, "Happy birthday, my dear."

She says, "Thankyou."

(silence)

I let the knife be shown, in all it's metallic wonder, spinning it in my palms just so slowly. "I...thought...I'd take you out for a ...special...birthday...date."

Her blond hair falls limply down her slender shoulder.

She shrugs. "I have a date. Thankyou, though."

I pause and consider all the things I could do with a knife like this and a gal like her.

I say, "With...who?"

A man pulls up in a convertible, black and sleek and spotless. He is wearing a white coat, he has brown hair. He looks like a

stretched out twelve year old.

Margaret smiles--smiles--and puts her weaving to the ground, slinking over to the car. She turns delicately and waves

waves

waves

She gets into the

sleek black car

sleek black car

and as it revs, the man says, "If you see Batman anywhere," he says, he says, he says, "tell him Wilson said...'fuck you'"

And he drives off.

Author's Note: If you don't get that reference you are either not Swing Girl at Heart and/or cinematically depraved. I have no tolerance for either.